Telling the history of Cape Verde islands by the "Chorématique"
ISBN 978-85-88783-11-9
Authors
1Menegatto, M.
1UNIVERSITY OF SÃO PAULO (USP) Email: matmenegatto@gmail.com
Abstract
If the Cartography is the representation of the objects and the phenomena of Earth’s surface, it is necessary to understand that these objects and phenomena are distributed side by side, with or without overlapping. This spatial distribution is compounded by different contexts and dimensions. At first, we need to remember that there is a variety of things, and the place that each thing is located, when there is not any geometric dimension, is a point. A point only refers to a location and cannot be measured by other reference that not the location. When we have a line that connects two or more points (places), it is possible to measure a distance and a direction. In this case, there is one dimension, the first one. At last, if the Cartography intends to represent the Earth as a surface, the cartographers need to consider more than one dimension, but two (the area, compounded by length and width) or three (the volume, compounded by length, width and height). There are two ways to understand the space: a topographical one, that considers it as a set of dimensions and forms, based in Euclidean geometry, and a topological one, that considers it as a network, based in a non-Euclidean geometry. Joining the point (the unit without dimension) and the network (the unit of the topological space) with the line and the surface (the units of the topographic space), we have four basic figures that can represent the space. In this case, the space is the own Earth’s surface. The French geographer Brunet (2001) understands that the societies appropriate the Earth’s surface as a space for their immaterial life and material production. And it is clear that there are lots of ways to live and produce, and all these are related to specific spatial organizations. The anthropologist Lévi-Strauss (1967) says that the dimensions of the material and immaterial lives are established according to different models. Each dimension is called structure, and the unique way to see or to understand a structure is by a model. And we can add that, for each social structure, there is a corresponding spatial one. To Brunet, it is possible to see seven types of relationship between the man and the Earth’s surface, namely the connection of places, the hierarchy of spaces, the “gravitational force” among different areas, the contact between two regions, the movement of an action, the division of a territory and the direction of a phenomenon. To represent these seven ways of geographic relationship, we can use the four basic figures that we previously mentioned. The result of the multiplication of the four geometric figures by these relationships is a group of twenty eight spatial structures (or "chorèmes", that in French language means “unities of space”). The science that studies the best ways to represent the "chorèmes" is the "Chorématique". This work aims to present the history of the relationships in Cape Verde, an archipelago of West Africa compounded by ten islands and thirteen islets. The country has half a million of inhabitants, the majority a Creole population whose origin remounts to five centuries ago (CARREIRA, 1972). As former Portuguese colony located in the Sahel, the history and the geography of Cape Verde are very interesting. The facts of this history and this geography that we choose to analyze in the work are the process of colonization and the relationships among the cities and the networks in the different historical periods. In the models, we represent each island as an ellipse, whose size depends of the importance of the island in the archipelago’s network. The geometric conception to the graphic models is naturally the non-Euclidean geometry. Bibliography BRUNET, R. (2001). Le déchiffrement du monde: théorie et pratique de la géographie. Belin, Paris. LÉVI-STRAUSS, C. (1967). Structural Anthropology. Doubleday Anchor Books, New York. CARREIRA, A. (1972). Cabo Verde. Formação e extinção de uma sociedade escravocrata. Imp. Portuguesa, Lisbon
Keywords
Chorématique; Cape Verde; Historical Geography